Recent research from Massachusetts General Hospital showed vaccination for women during pregnancy led to more lasting levels of antibodies in infants when compared to infants born to unvaccinated mothers infected with COVID-19.
A EurekAlert! report said that with the pandemic entering its third year, initiatives to mitigate the risk of infection to alleviate the risk for infection stay vitally important, specifically for vulnerable populations.
Antibody levels, also known as titers, were higher in vaccinated mothers and their umbilical cord blood at delivery compared to those study volunteers infected with COVID-19.
Two months after, 98 percent of the infants born to vaccinated moms had detected protective IgG or Immunoglobulin levels, the most common antibody that exists in the blood.
At six months, the study authors looked at 28 babies born to vaccinated mothers and discovered that 57 percent still had detectable IgG. That was compared with only one out of 12 or eight percent born to infected mothers.
How Vaccination Benefits Babies
The new research, published in The Journal of the American Medical Association, involved people vaccinated with two doses of mRNA vaccine or infected with the virus at 20 to 32 weeks gestation when the antibodies' transfer through the life-giving placenta has shown to be at its peak.
According to Andrea Edlow, MD, MSc, a Maternal-Fetal Medicine specialist at MGH, while it remains unclear just how high the antibody needs to shield a baby from COVID-19, they know that anti-spike IgG levels correlate with protection from disease.
Edlow, also the director of Edlow Lab in the Vincent Center for Reproductive Biology and the publication's co-senior author, added the antibody response's durability here shows vaccination not just offers lasting protection from mothers but antibodies as well, persisting in a majority of infants to at least six months of age.
A lot of interested parties from parents to pediatricians want to find out how long materials antibodies persevere in infants following vaccination, and how some answers can be provided.
The co-senior author also said they hope such research findings will offer further incentive for pregnant women to get vaccinated, particularly with the occurrence of new COVID-19 variants like Omicron.
Study Limitation
In their study, the researchers noted limitations to their work, including the small study group, delays in follow-up with the group infected with COVID-19 because of the availability of participants and coronavirus surges in Boston, and reporting of titers in contrast to clinical results.
Core members of the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard Galit Alter, also the co-senior of the study explained pregnant women are at "extremely high risk" for severe complications of COVID-19.
As indicated in a Medical Xpress report, Galit also said that given the lag in COVID-19 vaccines' development for infants, these data need to motivate mothers to get vaccinated and even boost during pregnancy to empower the defenses of their babies against COVID-19.
Financial backing for this research included grants from The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases or NIAID, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development or NICHD, the Gates Foundation, and the March of Dimes.
Related information about COVID-19 vaccines and pregnancy is shown on Mayo Clinic's YouTube video below:
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